


The Fourth Quadrant

by Saesama



Series: 28xFirst Kiss Combo [19]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: All the Quadrants - Freeform, Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, Dersecest - Freeform, Dirk only wants one, F/M, Humans In Troll Romances, Rose has all of the quadrants
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-11
Updated: 2013-10-11
Packaged: 2017-12-29 02:01:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/999544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saesama/pseuds/Saesama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She fully understands three of the quadrants. The fourth is still a mystery.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Fourth Quadrant

Dirk is tearing apart robots again.

He never conjures them out of whole cloth, despite his rights and powers as a god of this universe. He creates wires and sheet metal and builds them, then destroys his creations in violent brawls. Perhaps it says something about the kind of god he is, that he is only willing to destroy what he puts effort into creating.

Rose watches him, silent at the edge of the chamber. He's built a great many this time, and each generation is more deadly than the last. There are no more threats, nothing they cannot destroy, and yet Dirk still hones his blade, for he is the Destroyer, and to deny that is to deny himself. Rose wonders unkindly how much of his drive is due to his class and how much is due to his own innate violence. She wonders how much of that drive she inherited.

None, she decides firmly. She is the Guiding Star, and while her path may occasionally lead to Destruction, she never goes there herself. She is strictly ambivalent.

_(Kanaya destroyed her, rebuilt her and taught her the difference between love and pity and she is all the better for it. A husband or a wife is not enough, not anymore. Only a Matespirit will do and she pities Kanaya with all her heart.)_

Her audience is aware of her, of course. Her Light glints from metal edges and sharpened blades, and makes halos around gleaming optical sensors. But he does not acknowledge her for a long time, too intent on his calling. He is beautiful in his violent way, the fiercest of them all and their future wards and worshipers will depict him as a warrior with no chest armor and a gaping hole where his heart should be. Oh, he _has_ a heart, but it's in shards embedded in his friends and was never his own. She wonders if she might have ended up with a smaller shard than the rest, because she feels exasperation for him more often than affection, and there are times that she wonders what Roxy sees in him.

_(Roxy taught her Auspisticism, proper and true, and she can't help it, she's so damn Ashen for her mother-sister that it hurts but they need each other, need to keep each other balanced and in line)_

"Do you need something?" he asks finally, pitching his voice over the clash of metal. His voice is lower in register than when she met him, deepening as he approaches manhood and it would be perfect for sweetness or sin, but he's so deadpan, so cool and collected and emotionless.

"Not at all, she says, as she thinks of him panting and gasping, perhaps at her feet. "I merely wish to contemplate why you waste your time building those things, if you're only going to destroy them. There is at least one step you can skip."

"I won't only be a god of Destruction," he says, blocking a lightning fast strike. "I'll be a god of creation, too, technology or something, maybe warcraft."

She wonders how he would sound if she dug her nails into the back of his neck. "A _noble_ effort," she says, with deliberate emphasis on the word. "But you are a Destroyer. A Prince."

"Of Heart," he grunts, shoved back across the floor. "To break something is to know it intimately. You break the Heart of something, you gain the knowledge you need to build it again."

"Like you did Dave," she spits without thinking.

_(Dave gave her Moirallegiance, probably had been her Moirail since they met and she never realized it until she met the trolls. And maybe that's the source of her discontent with Dirk, because he'd been cruel to Dave when they met, and while Dave had forgiven him, she never had.)_

Dirk actually pauses and looks at her, cold behind his glasses. She wants to rip them off of his face. "He's whole again, isn't he?" he asks softly.

"Barely," she retorts. "I don't much care for your method of 'learning'."

"And I," he returns. "Do not give a fuck."

Her lip curls in distaste. "Of course not. We couldn't break the fabled 'cool-kid' persona by assuming you gave a fuck about anyone's opinion, could we?"

"It'd be a tragedy," he agrees. "Besides, my coolitude is why you like me, I can't give that up."

"I _don't_ like you," she snaps, surprised by both the venom in her voice and how much she means the words. She should like him, he's fully her match in intelligence and precision and manipulation (never mind that it's all probably inherited) and she enjoys their verbal spars but she doesn't _like_ him and it's more than just because of Dave.

A slash of his blade banishes the rest of the robots and he's suddenly looming over her with the faintest of derisive smirks on his face. "Good," he says softly, mockingly. "Because the feeling is mutual.

_(But the fourth quadrant eludes her until Dirk bites her lip and kisses her to make the pain linger and shows her Kismesissitude.)_


End file.
